Introduction

Discover the history and evolution of HTML, the standard markup language used to create web pages and applications.

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Introduction

In 1980, a physicist, Tim Berners-Lee, a contractor at CERN, proposed a system for CERN researchers. In 1989, he wrote a memo proposing an internet-based hypertext system. The first available description of HTML was a document called "HTML Tags" proposed by Tim in late 1991.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a standard markup language, not any programming language and is used for creating web pages and web applications. Web browsers receive an HTML document from a web server or local storage and display the document as a web page. Every web page must have an index.html file.

Hypertext is a text with links. Whenever you click on a hypertext or link, you simply go to another page or another part of the page.

Markup language is a computer language consisting of tags or plain text that is used to control the structure and formatting of a text document. It can turn text into images, tables, links, and other elements.

Versions of HTML

  • HTML 1.0: This basic version was released in 1991 and has support for basic elements like text controls and images.
  • HTML 2.0: This version was released in 1995. In this version, forms were developed with basic tags like text boxes, buttons, options, etc.
  • HTML 3.2: This version was released in 1997. In this version, tables and extra options for form elements were added.
  • HTML 4.01: This version was released in 1999. In this version, support for stylesheets (CSS) and scripting ability for various multimedia elements were added.
  • HTML 5: This version was released in 2014. In this version, semantic elements (<article>, <section>), multimedia tags (<audio>, <video>), canvas, and APIs like geolocation were introduced.
  • HTML 5.1: This version was released in 2016. In this version, minor improvements and clarified specifications for better interoperability were introduced.
  • HTML 5.2: This version was released in 2017. In this version, the latest W3C Recommendation, added support for features like the <dialog> element and improved form controls.
  • HTML (Living Standard): Maintained by WHATWG, this is the continuously evolving version used by modern browsers, incorporating the latest updates and features beyond HTML 5.2.